Generate Growth – 4 Ways Automation Can Help Your Business Flourish
Office life used to be a lot different than it is today. Hand-written memos on desks, file cabinets full to the brim, and voicemail checking were the norm, as was chaos and disorganization. It was easy for important documents to go missing or voicemails to go unanswered with little or no accountability.
Thanks to advancements in technology, many of today’s office tasks can be automated to save time and money and boost productivity. Let’s take a look at some of the ways automation can help your business flourish.
1. Invoice and Payment Management
Whether it’s seeking money from clients or paying vendors, invoicing is a necessary part of doing business. Sloppy or lazy invoice management can slow down other business processes and potentially damage your company’s reputation.
Upgrading to accounts payable automation can reduce errors while streamlining workflow processes. Fast approval, reliable payments, improved accuracy, and reduced errors are all possible with AP automation.
2. Onboarding Employees
Employee onboarding is vital to the success and growth of your business. With that said, it’s also notoriously time-consuming and frustrating as there is a lot of back-and-forth taking place.
Rectifying errors, signing documents, waiting for approvals, and digging through dozens of emails makes the onboarding process much slower and more frustrating than it really should be.
Automation reduces the tediousness of employee onboarding. It keeps the process moving along quickly and smoothly, with much of it taking place without the need for in-person meetings and often before the new hire even starts working.
3. Travel and Employee Reimbursements
Whenever an employee requests reimbursement, the process for approval and processing can be long and fraught with errors. First, the employee must fill out a form, attach receipts, and then manually turn it to management.
Once management looks it over and validates the expenditures, they’ll either reject or approve the request, at which point it gets handed over to the finance department for processing. By the time it’s all over, the request has passed through numerous hands and traveled through multiple departments, leaving plenty of room for error and loss.
By automating the process, errors are reduced as the computer fills in any blanks and directs the “paperwork” to the next party automatically. Everything is entered digitally, so there is no paper trail to deal with, and every person involved can get status updates anytime without bothering other personnel. Reimbursements can be direct-deposited into employee bank accounts overnight.
4. Time Off and Vacation Requests
Time off and vacation requests can be a major hassle for HR. Trying to keep up with who has what vacation left, who’s already taken time off, and what rules apply can result in poor scheduling and unhappy employees.
By automating the vacation and time-off request process, employees know at a glance whether they can take time off when they’re hoping to book a vacation. They’ll also know whether they are approved or denied with the simple click of a mouse.
Vacation automation software allows employers to tailor the calendar to suit specific rules and/or scheduling needs. If you need to limit the number of people in a given department who can take off at the same time, the software allows you to set these and other limits as you deem necessary.
The office of yesteryear was far different from the ones we work in today. Many tedious tasks like scheduling, onboarding new employees, and invoicing clients can now be automated to save time and money while boosting productivity. If you haven’t automated these processes in your business yet, be sure to investigate your options as each of the suggestions above can help your business flourish.
